Archive for the 'Aggression and violence' Category

Unequal weapons on the pitch: a partial defense of Zidane — UPDATED and REPOSTED

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 12, 2006
in Aggression and violence, Men and Masculinity, Race and Sports
. 27 Comments

A reader named Amber recovered this post via Bloglines.  Yay!  Thanks, Amber!  Comments are lost, however.

Like millions of other folks across the globe, I’ve spent the last three days reflecting on the extraordinary actions of Zinedine Zidane in Sunday’s World Cup Final.  I can’t imagine that there’s a reader in the blogosphere who hasn’t learned of the astonishing head-butt.  On Sunday, in the immediate aftermath of the match, I wrote:

I’ve been a sports fan since childhood, and in thirty years of watching every imaginable athletic activity (this was the seventh World Cup final I’ve seen on TV), I cannot think of any incident as shocking as Zinedine Zidane’s mindless, inexcusably violent head-butt in the latter stages of today’s match.  It’s as if in the midst of their last Super Bowl appearances, Joe Montana or John Elway were to have viciously kicked a poor defensive lineman in the groin.  I’ve never seen an athlete of such caliber completely lose his head in circumstances as vital and important as these.  It strikes me as one of the most self-destructive moments I’ve ever seen in sport.  No words — no matter how ugly or vicious — could have justified the violence and thoughtlessness of Zidane’s reaction.  I’m sad for how this will forever color his legacy.

But I wonder.  Zidane is set to speak today about what it was that the Italian player, Marco Materazzi, said that triggered the head-butt.  According to the lip-readers hired by the BBC, Materazzi told Zidane "you’re the son of a terrorist whore" (among other things) before Zidane turned on him.

We all know the old saying: "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me."  It’s quite possible that no other childish nursery rhyme is more fundamentally wrong-headed than that one!  And it’s also worth noting that the power of words to hurt is racially and sexually charged. 

In my fantasies, I am a great soccer player.  Now imagine that I was on the pitch on Sunday, not as clumsy Hugo Schwyzer, but as an athlete of Zidane’s caliber.  I am a white, Christian, heterosexual male.   What on earth could Materazzi say to me?  In the great arsenal of insults, Western culture doesn’t have derogatory language for white, Christian, heterosexual men.  The only way to get at me would be to feminize me (call me a "pussy") or "homosexualize" me (call me "queer"), but those would be terms that wouldn’t go to the core of my identity.   Materazzi’s power to injure with words would be considerably reduced. He could also call me the "son of a terrorist whore", but the epithet "terrorist" has no culturally significant meaning when attached to someone of my background.

When a white man and a man of color are playing on the pitch, no matter which European language they speak, the white man will have more "weapons in his verbal arsenal" than his rival.  Leaving aside gendered and sexualized insults, what power do the words "honky" and "cracker" and "redneck" have to hurt compared to, say, the word "nigger"?  If you call me a "cracker" (a term more accurately used to refer to poor rural whites), I’m going to laugh — there is no history of violence and hatred behind the word.  If I call a player of African descent the "n" word, I’m going to expect a different reaction — not because he has less self-control than I do but because of the extraordinary legacy attached to that term.

There isn’t a single term in English that you can use that attacks me for being who I am.   Put bluntly, the word "cunt" has more power to hurt than the insult "prick"; the word "nigger" more power to hurt than the word "honky", the word "faggot" more power to hurt than the word "straight."  Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me" — indeed, if I happen to be a privileged white male using Western European languages!

It is dangerous for whites, particularly white Christian men, to suggest that players like Zidane (who is of African descent and is a non-practicing Muslim) ought to be able to control their tempers better.  While all of us will be insulted at one time or another in our lives, it is absurd to suggest that all of us are equally vulnerable to racial, sexual, or religious slurs.  To be an African Muslim man, as Zidane is, renders one at the least doubly vulnerable to verbal attack.  And it is the height of arrogance for those of us who have never experienced these sorts of psychic injuries to demand constant self-control from those who have.

Mind you, in the end, I think Zidane deserved the red card.   Head-butting has no place on the pitch.  But I favor red cards for racial, religious, and gendered slurs as well — and if necessary, I favor giving them retroactively.  If FIFA can give a retroactive red card to Germany’s Torsten Frings for a punch he threw after the game with Argentina, they can certainly give one to Materazzi if his abuse is verified to have been racial, ethnic, sexual, or religious in nature.  When black players in Europe are pelted by banana peels or peanuts or monkey calls when theirs is the visiting team, award their side a penalty kick.   We need to be as strong and decisive in confronting verbal violence as we are in confronting head butts.  To do otherwise is to ignore the reality that words are genuine weapons, and in a racist culture, those weapons are unevenly distributed.

UPDATE: Of course, there’s another theory (Bernard-Henry Levy partially made it in the Wall Street Journal, h/t Rusty Parts): Zidane was tired of being the hero, the great man carrying the weight of a world’s hopes, tired of always being elegant and beautiful.  His head-butt was a "I’m a man, just a man" moment — a refusal to play the role he had been assigned and a impassioned plea to be seen as a human being.  Levy writes:

Yes, a man, a true man, not one of these absurd monsters or synthetic stars who are made by the money of brand names in combination with the sighs of the globalized crowd. Achilles had his heel. Zidane will have had his—this magnificent and rebellious head that brought him, suddenly, back into the ranks of his human brothers.

That may not be far off, and it certainly arouses tremendous sympathy.

Some Sunday Soccer Thoughts

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 9, 2006
in Aggression and violence and Sports
. 9 Comments

A rare Sunday post to report that my wife and I are utterly worn out after watching the World Cup final with 250 other folks at a public party at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood.  We went with my wife’s best friend, who is entirely of Calabrian descent and a passionate Italy fan, and so we all rooted for the Azzurri. 

It was not a beautiful match, but a watchable one nonetheless.   Unlike many football fans, I’ve always accepted that penalty kicks are part and parcel of the game; perhaps it comes from my love of American football, where games are frequently settled by field goals.   On the whole, the better team won — France did not deserve to be awarded the penalty that they were given in the opening minutes, and Italy’s goal was a splendid and fair one.  The play of the entire Italian defense was sublime. On the other hand, Thierry Henry positively sparkled and the Italian offense disappeared in the last hour of the match. 

I will say that this was the first time since 1982 (when Germany beat France in the semis) that a World Cup penalty shootout has gone my way.   England’s exits via shootout in 1998 and 2006 were both heartbreaking, and I wept for Roberto Baggio when he famously missed his penalty here in Pasadena in the 1994 final.  Today it seems that the footie deities have issued divine compensation.  Early prediction: England beats Argentina on penalties in the 2010 WC final in South Africa.  One can hope.

I’ve been a sports fan since childhood, and in thirty years of watching every imaginable athletic activity (this was the seventh World Cup final I’ve seen on TV), I cannot think of any incident as shocking as Zinedine Zidane’s mindless, inexcusably violent head-butt in the latter stages of today’s match.  It’s as if in the midst of their last Super Bowl appearances, Joe Montana or John Elway were to have viciously kicked a poor defensive lineman in the groin.  I’ve never seen an athlete of such caliber completely lose his head in circumstances as vital and important as these.  It strikes me as one of the most self-destructive moments I’ve ever seen in sport.  No words — no matter how ugly or vicious — could have justified the violence and thoughtlessness of Zidane’s reaction.  I’m sad for how this will forever color his legacy.

Another thought: I think the USA ought to remind everyone that they were the only team in Germany 2006 not to lose to Italy.  I have no great love for American soccer, but in hindsight, the American heroics on June 17, where they drew the Italians despite being down to only nine players, were indeed impressive.

My heart is already turning towards another Premiership season (with my heart firmly at St James’ Park) and Euro 2008.  Here’s to Wales and Scotland both qualifying, and to England pulling out a famous victory.

It’s been a hell of a month.  When this World Cup began on June 9, my father and my Matilde were still alive; in the thirty days since this tournament began, I’ve lost them both.  I’ve watched a lot of soccer through my tears these past few weeks, and in years to come, thoughts of Germany 2006 will always be tinged with the memory of great loss.

Some thoughts on gang bangs and “proving it”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 1, 2006
in Aggression and violence, Body, GLBTQ, Men and Masculinity and Sexuality
. 11 Comments

Abyss2hope at Alas, A Blog has a short post up about the Duke rape case and homosocial bonding.  The post has a link to this Washington Blade story, a story which begins:

A criminal psychologist said Collin Finnerty, the Duke University lacrosse player charged with rape and assault, could be attempting to prove his masculinity.

"Masculinity is something that has to be proven," she said. "It is not innate or natural. It’s something young men have to establish, and they have to establish it publicly.

(Bold emphasis mine).

In the field of "men and masculinity studies", there’s an extraordinary amount of material written about the problem of "proving it".  In virtually every young American man’s life, establishing one’s masculine credentials in the eyes of male peers is one of the most difficult, most constant — and most self-defining — activities of childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood.  In both fiction and autobiography, countless men have recorded the sad, brave, appalling, frightening, disgusting, daring, and frequently unsuccessful measures they took, alone or collectively, to "prove" that they were men.

A book I use regularly in my Men and Masculinity class is Muy Macho: Latino Men Confront their Manhood, edited by Ray Gonzalez.  One of the essays in the book is by Rudolfo Anaya, who describes this phenomenon — and the way in which women are used — perfectly:

Little boys like to brag about the length of their penises, or they have contests to see who can piss the farthest.  Acting out "I’m bigger, I’m better", the game begins to have a built-in power aspect. Later, boys will brag about having scored with a girl, and in the boast is contained a hint of the power they have exercised.  Those who haven’t yet scored have less power.  They’re virgins in the game.  Those who don’t see girls as the goal to be conquered have even less power.  A hierarchy of needs and behavior begins to define the male role and the power inherent in it.

Bold emphasis mine.

Another writer in the same collection, Ilan Stavans, makes a similar point about the vital function sex with women plays in establishing manhood.

Like most of my friends, I lost my virginity to a prostitute… An older acquaintance was responsible for arranging the date, when a small group of us would meet an experienced harlot at a whorehouse.  It goes without saying that none of the girls in my class were similarly "tutored": They would most likely become women in the arms of someone they loved, or thought they loved.  But love or even the slightest degree of attraction was not involved in our venture.  Losing our virginity was actually a dual mission: to ejaculate inside the hooker and then, more importantly, to tell of the entire adventure afterward.  The telling of the story — the matador defeating the bull, the conqueror’s display of power — was more crucial than the carnal sensation itself.

Again, bold emphasis is mine.

This last bit from Stavans popped into my head weeks ago in relation to the Duke case.  (Though many have focused on the fact that the victim in North Carolina is black, few have pointed out that she’s also several years older than those who are accused of raping her.  That fits a classic story line too, a subject for another post.)  When my students read Anaya and Stavans, most of them end up nodding their heads vigorously.  In their own lives, or the lives of the men they know, they see so clearly how hetero-relations have been almost hopelessly infected by the overwhelming need that so many guys have to "prove it" — using a woman’s body to do so.

The thrill of the gang bang — or gang rape, which is different — is not the sex: it’s the audience.  Pardon the vulgarity: but the real payoff is not to fuck, but to be seen fucking.  Homosociality (the overwhelming need to prove oneself in the eyes of one’s own sex) all too often trumps authentic sexual desire, or becomes so hopelessly entangled with innate sexual desire that many men have trouble distinguishing what they a priori want and enjoy from what behavior will bring them the pleasure of greater status in the eyes of men.  In other words, like Stavans, they derive more lasting pleasure from sharing with other men their conquest narrative than they do from the sexual experience itself!  That’s one of the most universal — and ugliest — aspects of modern American masculinity.

A call for submissions on domestic violence

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 25, 2006
in Aggression and violence, Feminism and Men and Masculinity
. 4 Comments

Jen from Smith College (and host of Righteous Revolution) posts the following call:

A project I’m working on for a class (and which may end up being much further-reaching than the halls of Smith College, and longer-lasting than that of a final project):

Disclaimer: If submitting your story will in any way put you in danger, please do not attempt to do so until you can ensure your own safety.

I am in the process of creating a compilation blog to illustrate the various intersections of identity and societal influences that play a role in the differing experiences of domestic violence (including physical, sexual, emotional, or similar kinds of abuse). Instead of the largely white, heterosexual, middle-class stories of domestic violence that dominates the sphere of knowledge, this blog project will include a truly diverse array of experiences. Domestic violence is not limited to white/heterosexual/middle-class populations, and neither is this project.

I am therefore sending out a call for submissions. If you have been a victim of domestic violence (as defined, for the purposes of this project, above), or have been directly involved in another person’s experience of DV, and wish to speak out about your experiences, please email your submission to: speakup(dot)speakout(at)yahoo(dot)com

There are no style or length limitations. The one request I have is this: in order to aid in the reader’s (and my) understanding of your experience of DV, I would appreciate if you included your location in the world - e.g. a general geographic region, gender identity, sexual orientation, cultural background, etc. Feel free to include as few or as many locators as you wish.

The deadline for submissions is: Monday, May 1, 2006.

More detailed information about the project is available at the blog: Speaking Up, Speaking Out… Against Domestic Violence. If you have further questions, feel free to email me at the address listed above.

My understanding is that men are welcome to submit to this project, but please don’t use Jen’s project as a soap box for challenging the whole notion of domestic violence. Submissions need not all be from feminists, of course, but they ought not to openly hostile to feminism.

Boxing, MRAs, priorities

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 28, 2006
in Aggression and violence, Athletics and Fitness, Men and Masculinity, Men's Movement and Vanity
. 48 Comments

North Carolina beat Tennessee.  Darn it all.  My women’s bracket is now nearly wiped out; please, Lord, let Duke beat UConn.

A friend points me to the ultra-MRA lads at the Nice Guys Forum; they’re all very confused that I’ve started boxing.  In their infinite spare time, they’ve devoted a thread to me.  One of them writes:

All of that being said, I think I saw somewhere that Hugo was either considering practicing boxing or actually doing it. As someone who has sparred in contact fighting (including Thai boxing and grappling) I find it rather strange on his part. I though he criticized ‘traditional’ male activities like that . . . oh well.

Deal with it, fellas!  Really, I’ve been loving the boxing, though I still have a long way to go in learning technique.  My trainer Pepe has been amazing — in two months, he’s begun to transform my body and my skills.  Increasingly, I’m comfortable about the idea of hitting another human being without intending to hurt them.   If I think of boxing as "scoring points", I can imagine myself sparring with others without abrogating my commitment to non-violence. 

When I hit the bag, or my trainer’s mitts, I’m not fantasizing about hurting people. I’m not venting or letting out anger. When I started all of this training, I worried that it might make me more aggressive, or at least encourage violent daydreams.  (I’ve posted about this in an explanation of why I stay away from video games).  Happily, boxing three mornings a week with Pep leaves me tired but peaceful. I feel more in tune with my body than I have in a long time, and I rejoice in that.

When I add up how much money my wife and I spend on things like Pilates sessions and gym memberships and private boxing lessons, it’s a considerable expense. (And I’m about to add yoga into the mix.)  I go through a pair of running shoes every six to eight weeks. And yet, we don’t spend much on our cars.  I don’t spend anything on alcohol, because I don’t drink and my wife has only a rare glass of wine.  We don’t own a stereo system.  I have no idea what a Blackberry really does, or what Bluetooth is. Our TV is adequate, but unimpressive.  I have zero interest in spending much on entertainment, and realize that the amount of money I spend each week on working out is no more than some of my friends spend on going out.  We all have our priorities, I suppose!

I’ve got some more thoughts on immigration coming tomorrow.  And a long post about masturbation percolating in my head too, though that may wait a day or two.  And one about the first woman priest I knew well.  Sigh.  And now I’ve got dinner to make and a chinchilla to entertain and a wife to embrace — and I’m getting up at 4:30 tomorrow morning to go hit things before the sun comes up.

A short note on freed hostages and pacifism

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 24, 2006
in Aggression and violence, Family, Pacifism and War
. 24 Comments

I’m rejoicing this morning in the news that three of the Christian Peacemaker Teams volunteers have been freed in Iraq.  The three were freed by a multinational task force of soliders, who found the hostages unguarded.  No shots were fired and no one was hurt during the rescue operation.

Of course, joy in the release of the surviving three is tempered by the sorrow at the murder of a fourth hostage, a Quaker from Virginia, Tom Fox.  And as I celebrate, my inner pacifist finds myself wondering how I would feel if the rescuers had had to shoot the kidnappers.   I’m delighted that the men are all safe, of course, but I could not endorse or support the use of lethal force to free them.  I say that, mind you, in the full knowledge that if one of these men were my father or my brother, I might feel differently.  It’s harder to adhere to one’s pacifist commitments when one’s loved ones are in harm’s way.

It’s the old question that always gets thrown at pacifists: "what would you do if someone threatened your family?"  John Howard Yoder, the greatest Mennonite theologian of the past century, gave the best and most impressive answer to that question, and I recommend his little book to everyone.  I try and reread it fairly often.

A long reflection on gentlemanliness

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 21, 2006
in Aggression and violence, Christianity, Class, Faith, Feminism, Men and Masculinity and Pacifism
. 55 Comments

I’m still reflecting on the aftermath of last week’s major blogosphere debate about feminism, civility,and commenting rules.  No, I’m not going to revisit that issue specifically.

Rather, I’m thinking about the number of folks who’ve taken me to task for my attachment to notions of courtesy and civility.  Last week, over in this thread at Feministe, I wrote:

To me, civility is not about ideology. It’s about tactics. I judge people less by what they believe, and more by the tools they employ to convey those beliefs. Or, to put it another way, I care less about the “ends” and more about the “means”.

And a whole bunch of folks took issue with that.  Not surprisingly, I was initially very defensive — which was a mistake.  I eventually bowed out of the entire thread.  But in reading the challenges to my position, especially from DarkDaughta (NWS), I’ve been forced to ask myself a basic question to which I already know the answer:

To what extent does my passionate attachment to being "nice" really reflect my faith, and to what extent is it a reflection of my privilege as a middle-class white man with tenure?

Years ago, my theological wanderings led me to the Mennonites.  I became an enthusiastic Anabaptist (heck, I’m always an enthusiastic something).  I loved the Anabaptist/Mennonite commitment to social justice and to non-violence.  In the aftermath of September 11, I found the radical witness of the peace churches to be particularly compelling.  But I found, later rather than sooner, that I was making a serious error:

I tend to confuse Jesus’ call to be a peacemaker with my family’s admonition to always be "nice". 

I was raised to be what my family called a "gentleman".  In my family, it meant a "gentle man", with gentle in the modern sense of polite and kind, not in the older sense of aristocratic birth.  (Though some folks in my family did, in my childhood, have some attachment to the idea that gentlemen were also listed in the Social Register and belonged to the Right Clubs.  I’m not in either the Social Register or the Bohemian Club, though both were important to me when I was much younger).  My grandmother always said "A gentleman makes everyone around him feel comfortable."  And for years and years, I’ve worked so hard to live up to that ideal!  And when I became a Christian, I thought that one of the things I had found in my relationship with Jesus was a new power to become even nicer, and make my family even prouder.

But as better Christians than I tend to discover early on, Jesus is not "nice."  As C.S. Lewis says of Aslan, his Christ-figure in the Narnia books, "He’s not a tame lion!"  Jesus was non-violent, it’s true — and peacemaking was at the center of His mission on earth.  But Jesus never compromises the truth in order to save people’s feelings.  He may have said "turn the other cheek", but he also overturns the money-changer’s tables in the temple.  That was very, very, impolite of Him.

Jesus models a new way of relating to the powers and principalities that be.  Unlike the Zealots, He will not endorse violence against other human beings.  But His non-violence is not passive, and it isn’t "nice".  He makes people uncomfortable over and over again; He is not a proper gentleman. A proper gentleman of the sort I aspired to be would have had lunch with the Pharisees and the Sadducees, the Romans and the Zealots, and told them all that they were awfully nice people and that God loved them just the way they were, and couldn’t they all be just a bit more civil to each other? Pretty please?

I’ve realized something this week that I don’t like about myself.  I call myself a pro-feminist and a Christian.  But too often, when my ideology and my faith come into conflict with my desire to be a charming people-pleaser who "makes everyone feel comfortable", my childhood aspirations of gentlemanliness trump my political and spiritual convictions.  So I end up more attached to my blog as a place where everyone can get along than as a place where the intersection of faith, feminism, and sexual mores can be thoughtfully — and honestly — explored. 

If I’m serious about my Christian faith, I will, to paraphrase Desmond Tutu, genuflect before the image of Christ that I see in all living things.  I will love God’s creatures as I love myself.  But I must find a way to be a bit more Christ-like, and that means I must be better about confronting evil rather than trying to accommodate it.  My pacifist principles mean that I must never hit those whose views are hateful.  But pacifism does not ask me to charm them, particularly when my own motives for being charming are less about changing the hearts and minds of those with whom I am in debate and more about cultivating a satisfying image of myself as perennially pleasant, irenic, and gentlemanly.

One spiritual advisor of mine always says, "Hugo, if you’re not pissing somebody off you’re not doing your work."  I hate it when he says that.  But I know he’s right.  If I’m going to walk with Jesus as I claim to want to do, if I’m going to be an effective advocate for pro-feminist principles, I have to be willing to let go of my childlike desire to be likable and inoffensive. I need to see that my very ability to remain aloof from the struggle is a consequence of my privilege rather than my commitment to Christ. 

And while I don’t need to start bopping people on the head (or even wielding a whip like my Lord in the temple), I could be of a hell of a lot more service if I let go of my incredibly strong infatuation with civility, courtliness, and being thought a "heckuva nice guy."

Showing your support for Jane Doe

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 16, 2006
in Aggression and violence, Sexuality and Youth
. 5 Comments

More than 5000 hits since midnight, my highest daily total in months.  I wish I could be happier about why…

But here’s something we can all agree on:

One topic that’s been well-discussed in the feminist blogosphere case has been the Orange County Gang Rape case.  Sheelzebub has done a very good job of providing coverage, and recently posted the statement to the judge written by Jane Doe, the then 16 year-old victim in this horrific case.

Though the three rapists have been sentenced to six years each, Jane Doe is proceeding with a civil case.   She was repeatedly harassed by defense investigators and the families of the accused; she has lived a long and horrible nightmare.  One of my regular readers, Catty, has a connection with Jane Doe’s civil suit attorney.  She would like to collect letters of support for Jane Doe via email; these will then be passed on to her attorney and then, presumably, to Jane Doe herself.  Catty is also looking for folks who live in the OC area who are willing to show up during the civil trial to offer support for this very brave and very young survivor.  Contact her at the email address below.

The letters will be screened, and obviously only supportive letters will be passed on.  Please email them to Catty at her email address: ihiroe@yahoo.com

Further notes on Crash, car accidents, and race

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 6, 2006
in Aggression and violence, Class, Ethnicity, Movies and Race
. 4 Comments

I’m planning to pull myself together in the next two hours and make it to school.  One nice thing about being home sick — I get to watch the Wigan-Manchester United match live on Fox Sports World; Wigan is up a goal and I’m very pleased.  They’ve become my new darlings in the Premiership.

But I can keep one eye on the soccer and one on the blog, all the while pumping in the broth and the tea.  I just downloaded Dolly Parton’s "Travelin’ Thru" (which missed out on the Academy Award for best song); it’s free right now (today only) on Itunes.

I’d like to follow up, briefly, on my remarks below in response to "Crash" winning the best picture Oscar.   As much as I enjoyed certain aspects of the well-acted, well-written film, I felt it presented a distorted vision of the Los Angeles I know. 

I am a bit of an oddity — raised on the Central Coast and in the Bay Area, I’m passionately attached to Los Angeles.  Though I think often about retiring to the little town on the coast where I was raised, I’m very happy living in this metropolis.   I’ve been blessed to do a lot of traveling, and I enjoy seeing new places, but I’m rarely happier than when I look out the window as a long international flight drops back into L.A. at night, and I see the sparkling lights of my home sprawling as far as the eye can see.  I feel fundamentally at home here, and not merely in certain neighborhoods.

Los Angeles is a city of freeways, as everyone knows.  In the early 1990s when I was in grad school, some friends and I made a commitment to spend our weekends traveling the county only using surface streets.  We drove from Westwood to Watts to Winnetka, Lincoln Heights to Larchmont to Lawndale, Venice to Vernon to Van Nuys, Santa Monica to San Marino to San Pedro — all without hitting a freeway.  And we didn’t just drive; part of playing the "surface street game" meant going to restaurants and cafes and shops in all the neighborhoods we visited.  We were a multi-racial group ourselves; my first wife (to whom I was married at the time) was half-Chinese, half-Filipino.  With her and my other friends, I learned to eat lumpia and menudo; challah and carnitas and catfish; I ate grits and injera and came to love it all.

Our trips were daytime trips, mind you.  We didn’t take foolish risks, but at the same time, we tried our best not to let prejudices and fears hold us back from new experiences.  For example, I got my hair buzzed in an African-American barbershop on Crenshaw Boulevard; some folks ignored me, others engaged me in friendly banter.  I didn’t feel like I was "slumming" (a derogatory term often applied to middle-class whites who venture into the ‘hoods); I felt like I was trying — humbly and respectfully — to learn, to taste, to know something new and different.

And yes, I had a car accident — the central subtext of "Crash".  I had bought my first car not long after I moved to Los Angeles, a used 1983 Honda Accord.  One bright summer day in 1989, I was transitioning from the 101 to the southbound 110 when a big rig rear-ended a little Nissan a few cars in front of me.  We all slammed on our brakes, but my Honda didn’t stop until I’d rear-ended the Mercedes sedan in front of me.  Ours were the only four vehicles involved; no one was hurt.  Though it was more than sixteen years ago, I remember the other drivers vividly: the big rig was driven by a black man; the Nissan he hit was driven by a Latina; the Mercedes was driven by an elderly Chinese couple who spoke limited English.  We all exchanged insurance information on the side of the road, and as we did so, I began to cry.  I know it was childish, but I was so upset I had done so much damage to my "new" car (the Mercedes I hit had only a scratch, while my Honda was, if not totalled, much more heavily damaged).  The Chinese man patted my arm and assured me it would be okay, while his wife smiled at me wanly.  The CHP officer — Latino — saw that my license still listed "Carmel" as my home address, and by way of comfort, told me he’d grown up in the Salinas area and couldn’t wait to move home to our native Monterey County.

No one yelled.  No one got upset. (Well, I did, but those were tears of self-pity, not rage).  There were no racial epithets, either.  And it never occurred to me that there was anything odd about the civility of our experience that hot morning on the Harbor Freeway.  I’ve had two fender-benders since (one my fault, one not); both involved drivers of other ethnic groups.   And in neither of those instances were harsh words exchanged about our respective backgrounds!

I am quite confident that my experience has not been all that unusual.  (This is not to deny the reality of racism, a reality to which I confess I am often blind.  I know damned well that I can play the "surface street game" with relative impunity because I am white.  I can drive up and down South 167th street more easily than a black man can drive up and down Charleville Avenue in Beverly Hills.  One of us is a heck of lot more likely to be pulled over than the other!)  There are millions of folks in this county in interracial relationships like mine, who have successfully (if not effortlessly) blended our families and our kitchens and our workplaces and our bedrooms.  And in reference to the film’s opening conceit, we sure as hell don’t need to crash into each other just to feel some human contact!  But when we do crash — by accident, thanks — most of us manage to resolve the problem without resorting to ugly caricatures.

I won’t say I’ve been "everywhere", but I’ve done a fair amount of travelin’ in my day, across this state, the country, and the globe.  And with the possible exception of Cape Town, I can’t think of a place I’ve been to where racial harmony amidst tremendous diversity is so evident as it is in my beloved adopted home of greater Los Angeles.  When I think of how "Crash" may have only reinforced the stereotypes of L.A. that outsiders have, I’m angry and grieved.

I’m also mildly grieved by a late Man U goal that has robbed Wigan.  I think I’m ready to teach my night class!

A note on the “History of Violence”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on January 10, 2006
in Aggression and violence, Christianity and Movies
. 8 Comments

I’m feeling "blogged out" at the moment.  Most of the time, I’m not at a loss for topics — but sometimes, I feel utterly drained.

I will say that we went to see "A History of Violence" on Sunday night.  We’re doing our best to see all the Golden Globe nominees before the awards shows, and this was next on the list.  We approached the film with reluctance — neither my wife nor I are fans of graphically violent films.  But we both admire Viggo Mortensen, and the film’s inclusion on so many "best of 2005" lists helped us to overcome those reservations.

It’s a bloody, disturbing, thoughtful, and supremely entertaining film.  And as sometimes happens with well-crafted gore fests (like Quentin Tarantino’s pictures) I leave feeling aroused and ashamed of that arousal.  I don’t mean sexual excitement, mind you — I mean a different sort of excitement, the sort that comes from having seen images you haven’t seen before, or at least not in a very long time.

I don’t do well with explicit violence.  Oddly, the last time I walked out of a theater with a similar sense of nausea and excitement was after the Passion of the Christ.  I do my best to avoid films that will be profoundly gory, but I make exceptions for films that have generated sufficient acclaim.  Sometimes (as with "Natural Born Killers") I’m simply left empty and disgusted; other times, as with the "Passion" and "History of Violence", I’m left challenged and moved.  In an odd but compelling way, this was a deeply Christian picture — it’s a movie about marital devotion, redemption, rebirth, and the corrosive nature of violence.

(Warning, spoiler ahead) 

In the climactic scene of the film, the Viggo Mortensen character ("Joey",) kills his older brother Richie (a splendid William Hurt).  Right before he’s shot, Richie exclaims "Jesus, Joey" — and his brother replies, calmly, "Jesus, Richie."  In the context of the film, this is not our Lord’s name in vain, but rather a moment of sudden catharsis for both men.

Though "Brokeback Mountain" remains the best film I’ve seen all year, "A History of Violence" has been the most challenging to me spiritually.  Its violence is so graphic and unrelenting that it is difficult to recommend, and yet the underlying humanity and beauty of the film is undeniable.  I’m still haunted by it.

I will try and get up a "Top Ten films of 2005" list after I’ve finished seeing all of the nominees.

Good news!

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on January 5, 2006
in Aggression and violence, Feminism and Politics
. 76 Comments

Well, in an increasingly rare bit of good news out of Washington, President Bush signed the extension of the Violence Against Women Act today.  Now we just have to continue to pressure Congress to fully fund VAWA each year.

There will be much gnashing of teeth by men’s rights advocates.

A note about blogging and pictures

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on January 3, 2006
in Aggression and violence, Blogging, Body, Feminism, Men and Masculinity and Photos
. 49 Comments

I’ve made great progress on my grading today, so I’ll slip in a post.

Jill has been the subject of some really nasty Internet attacks, the sort that tend to focus on demeaning remarks about personal appearance.  Jill, like her co-blogger at Feministe, Lauren, has links to personal photos on their shared site.

This raises the delicate question  of the "embodied blogger".  To what extent do our pictures — and the assumptions and judgments our readers make about our face and bodies as a result — affect the impact of our blogs?  There seems to be a widespread notion (one that I can’t prove) that female bloggers who are thought of as "hot" have a larger readership.  (If anyone has any further stats on the matter, please provide!)   If true, this wouldn’t be surprising given our cultural obsession with women’s beauty, but it does raise some interesting questions for those of us who blog explicitly as feminists or pro-feminists.

Lauren offers a forthright explanation of why she and Jill put up their photos:

We don’t put our pictures up to be considered fuckable, we put our pictures up so that people can put a face to our writing. I appreciate this as a reader of many blogs and I’m sure others feel the same. While that does leave us open to be judged on our appearances, I never expected to be commented upon in such a wide sphere.

I’ll be the first to agree that pictures do help readers to "put a face" to writing, and I’m generally of a mind that that’s a good thing.  I know that whether I’m reading men’s blogs or women’s, I like knowing what the person who has written a post looks like.  Many bloggers don’t have pictures available, of course, and so I simply imagine in my head what they look like.  On more than one occasion, I’ve been stunned by the gulf between the real and the imagined writer when an image finally does appear!

Like Lauren, Jill, Trish, Amanda, and other feminist bloggers, I’ve been attacked by "trolls" who’ve said some fairly nasty things about me.  But though I have close to a hundred pictures of me in my photo albums, none of my critics ever go after my weight or my looks.   None of the MRAs have called me "ugly" or "fat" or anything similar.  A year ago, this picture elicited ridicule — but not scorn for my body.   This silence about my appearance is not a compliment to me as an individual, but rather a function of male privilege.

The attacks on my see-saw picture last year were not about my body or my face — they were about my engaging in an "unmanly" activity.  Trolls, you see, attack men for acting in ways that aren’t congruent with generally accepted standards of masculinity; they attack women for their weight and their looks.  In that sense, I — and other male bloggers whose photos are up — are protected from the kind of nastiness directed towards Jill at the moment.  Though my MRA (men’s rights advocate) critics have often been vicious towards me, they have never used the kind of highly personal and sexualized invective they direct towards the women at Feministe and other feminist blogs.  Yes, folks, once again a kind of perverse male privilege protects someone like me. Somehow, it seems that even among trolls, a code of conduct bars insulting remarks about other men’s bodies.

There are many reasons why I don’t put up photos of my wife.  One reason, however, is because I want to protect her from the kind of scrutiny that I am aware she would be instantly subjected to were I to do so.  My wife’s looks are far more likely to be judged than mine, and remarks about her appearance would then be connected to me. If she’s perceived as too pretty, my feminist credentials would be challenged.  If she’s perceived as unattractive, she’ll be ridiculed. I won’t expose either of us to that.

I do put up lots of pictures of me (and even more of my chinchilla.)  I do this to share quickly with family and friends, but also, as Lauren says, so that people can put a face to my writing.  I do think that pictures help humanize us.  Who among us hasn’t carefully studied the face of an author on a dust jacket of a favorite new book, looking for insight and clues about their "real" identity?  At the same time, I regret that women — particularly feminist women — who choose to provide visual images risk both sexualized objectification and ugly ridicule.   Jill’s post today is ample evidence of that.

Two quick notes — UPDATED

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on December 12, 2005
in Aggression and violence, Movies and Politics
. 5 Comments

Like most finals weeks, it’s an extremely busy time and I have very little time to post.  I may get something up later today –or not.

Two quick notes:

My wife and I saw Syriana on Saturday night, easily the best film I’ve seen this season.  (Given that our pace of movie-going always picks up in January and February, that may change.)  I like a film that makes the assumption that the audience is reasonably intelligent and can follow a plot!  I don’t know the whole story behind Participant Productions, but I’m deeply impressed that they’ve turned out three major films (along with three major social-justice campaigns) in the space of just over a month.  North Country, Good Night and Good Luck, and Syriana are all major awards contenders — and all have serious, thoughtful, political messages.  I’m sorry that North Country has struggled, but am happy that the other two have had both splendid reviews and excellent box office.

Also, the governor has not yet annouced his decision on clemency for Stanley "Tookie" WIlliams."  I remain prayerful, but if I look at the issue dispassionately, cannot imagine why granting clemency would be a "smart" move for Schwarzenegger.  He can announce today he’s agonized all weekend, and still allow the execution to go ahead.  It won’t assuage anti-death penalty advocates, but I suspect our numbers are small,  Granting clemency would further damage his already weakened relationship with his conservative base, and I don’t think he can risk that.  I hope I’m wrong, but I doubt it.

UPDATE:  Clemency denied.  I have a little ritual that I go through whenever California executes someone.  I play the Kathleen Battle version of "He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands".  I’m praying for Stanley Williams, his victims, and all those who are involved in tonight’s execution.  I am also asking, as I always need to around executions, for the strength to be kind and charitable today and tomorrow towards those who support capital punishment.  The urge to be vicious is strong in me, but I will not surrender to that temptation.

Quick thought on Tookie

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on December 9, 2005
in Aggression and violence, People and Politics
. 37 Comments

It’s a busy day, but I did want to briefly post about the battle to save the life of Stanley "Tookie" Williams.   

One of the few things I’ve been consistent on throughout my life is my opposition to the death penalty.  That opposition is not rooted in a fear that the innocent may be executed; it isn’t rooted in an ignorance as to the horror of the crimes invariably involved.  It is rooted in the conviction that everyone who participates in an execution is invariably brutalized, even if they aren’t entirely aware of it at the time.  The guards, the wardens, the witnesses, and the citizens of the state in whose name the execution is carried out are all a bit darker, a bit less human, as a result.

My mother reminded me last night of this famous Shaw line that seems most apropos: It is the deed that teaches, not the name we give it.   The message of capital punishment is not a life-valuing message.  As the old bumper sticker says, it makes no sense to "Kill people who kill people to prove that killing people is wrong."  The message of the death penalty is that we, the people, ought to have sovereign power over life itself, and that is a message I believe to be utterly at odds with the Gospel message.

But l’m troubled by the focus on Tookie’s story of redemption.  For me, at least, it makes not an iota of difference whether he has redeemed himself or not.  Obviously, I’m glad he’s done the work he has.  But authentic and consistent opposition to the death penalty must be based on the abhorrence of state-sanctioned murder, not on the perceived virtues of the condemned.  I’m as opposed to the death penalty for the vicious and the apparently irredeemable as I am for the Tookie Williamses of the world.   If Tookie Williams is executed, I will grieve neither more nor less than I do any other execution committed in my name.   

That doesn’t mean I’m not praying for clemency, and I’ve already contacted Gov. Schwarzenegger by e-mail and phone to express that to him.

The USC game, football, and the dangerous anger of the fan

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on December 5, 2005
in Aggression and violence and Sports
. 7 Comments

Like every Monday, it’s turning into a busy morning.  I’m feeling very guilty to boot.  I have two students with the same first name who are both applying to multiple colleges; one is a former student now applying for grad school, the other a current one.  I wrote them both glowing letters of recommendation — and of course, switched the last names.  They aren’t applying for the same programs or the same schools…  I’ve got time to correct the error, but it’s deeply embarrassing and I have been quite apologetic to the two students involved.   I write dozens of letters of recommendation every year, and I can’t ever recall having done this before. 

It was a happy weekend.  My wife managed to "score" some tickets to two very nice seats for the UCLA-USC football game, so we spent Saturday afternoon with 92,000 other folks at the Coliseum.  I, holder of multiple degrees from the University of California system (including the Ph.D. from UCLA) went to the game decked out in Trojan red.  As I wrote last week, my heart belongs to Cal; I didn’t feel as if I had much of a dog in this particular fight.  My wife, on the other hand, owns every available,purchasable piece of USC paraphernalia, and is absolutely rabid with passion for her alma mater.  (Each year that she was at ‘SC, the Trojans lost to both Notre Dame and UCLA, so she’s got extra reason to be happy these days.)  I had hoped for a more exciting game; as most folks know, the Trojans dominated from the start and won 66-19.  Given that the game was a bit of a dud, I spent as much time watching the action in the stands and enjoying the bands as I did following the struggle on the pitch.   (I also had one of my occasional "non-veggie" days.  I ate two burritos and two hot dogs by the start of the fourth quarter.)

What bothered me — and always has at athletic events — was the venom.   My wife and I were sitting surrounded by USC fans, and with one or two exceptions,  we were the youngest two folks in our section by a decade.  Most of the folks around us were old enough to be grandparents, but that didn’t stop virtually everyone of them from hurling extraordinary profanities towards UCLA, its players, its band, its cheerleaders, and everything else associated with the Bruins.   A woman in her fifties, sitting behind me, shouted "Hurt him!" when a Trojan defender dropped the Bruin quarterback* for a sack.  "Break his fuckin’ leg", her husband yelled.  They were drinking water and sodas; neither seemed intoxicated.   When the husband dropped his camera case on my shoulder, he apologized profusely.  He was perfectly polite to me while simultaenously rooting for a 21 year-old kid he’d never met to suffer a serious, painful injury. This couple wasn’t alone — everyone around us chanted "UCLA sucks" on more than one occasion. Three rows behind us,  that cry seemed to span three generations — I saw a Dad, his father, and his son all joining in the joyous obscenities together.

I do not mean to suggest that USC fans are any worse than any others.  I’ve been to countless Cal games and sat with both students and alumni, and heard the exact same sort of thing.  During my years as a UCLA grad student, I went to a few Bruin games at the Rose Bowl — and heard similar ugliness.  Something seems to give otherwise civilized people permission to say things they might not say publicly outside the confines of a sports stadium.   And I’ll be the first to admit that in my younger years, I sat in the student section at Memorial Stadium and rooted not only for my Golden Bears to do well, but for my opponents to be humiliated — and injured. 

The last time I yelled out something ugly at a football game was back in October, 1990.  I was at the Coliseum here in Los Angeles; my Cal Golden Bears were visiting the USC Trojans.  I was sitting in the visitor’s section, but fairly close to the field.  As folks familiar with ‘SC football know, they have as one of their mascots "Traveler", a white horse who carries a rider dressed in "authentic" Trojan guise.  After each touchdown the Trojans score, Traveler comes out and gallops up and down the sidelines.  (Back in 1990, the Coliseum still had a track around the perimeter of the field; it has since been removed. Traveler used to do a lap around the track .)  As Traveler came out after an ‘SC score that day, he suddenly bucked and threw his rider right in front of the Cal section. 

In an instant several thousand Cal fans, myself included, rose to our feet and cheered madly.  Traveler headed off riderless, and was grabbed by a few brave security men before he went into the Cal bench area.  The rider stayed down; he bled heavily from his nose and was treated on the field.  Some of my fellow Golden Bear fans continued to hurl obscenities at the injured rider, but I began to feel deeply ashamed.  The man was not seriously hurt, but he still needed to be taken off the field on a stretcher.  As he was wheeled off, he raised his hand with the two-finger Trojan victory salute, which served to stir up my fellow Cal partisans even further.  But I felt awful.  You see, when Traveler threw him off, I had wanted that man to be hurt.  I wanted — or thought I wanted — to see his blood and his pain.  And then I did see it quite clearly, and was disgusted with myself. 

Cal and USC ended that game in a 31-31 tie.  (Golden Bear fans will remember that that game was the last tie game in our history.)  As I headed home unsatisfied, I remember an acute feeling of self-disgust.  I did not like my own longing for blood, my own exultation at another man’s misfortune.  I made a pledge to myself: if I couldn’t control my own mouth and my own rage, I wasn’t going to let myself go to any more football games.  I actually took two years off as a result, not returning to a college game until Cal’s next visit to the Coliseum in 1992.  But I haven’t cheered for injuries or yelled that anybody "sucks" since that day some fifteen years ago. 

It’s not always easy holding back my tongue.  Two months ago, my Bears lost a heartbreaker to UCLA at the Rose Bowl. I was bitterly disappointed and frustrated (we squandered a couple of double-digit leads).   On the way out of the stadium for our walk home, some UCLA fans jeered at us (my wife was loyally wearing Cal colors too).   With every fiber of my being, I wanted to yell "Fuck you, assholes!"  But I restricted, and just shook my head at them.  Not only did I feel an obligation to all of the other folks around me not to pollute the air with bile, I felt an obligation to myself not to get high on my own anger.  In my youth, I was intoxicated by the rush of self-righteous rage that seems almost omnipresent at major college football games.  I remember too well that I once enjoyed seeing my opponents lose more than I enjoyed seeing my own team win.  It felt good to lust for blood; it felt good to be enraged; it felt good to feel big and important and powerful.  (It was very similar to how I felt at street protests, as I’ve posted before.)

So today, I don’t let myself go to that dark and enticing place of anger.   I love sports with all my heart.  I love watching sports, playing sports, reading about sports.  But today, I care less and less about who wins and who loses.  I care more and more about the way the game is played,and less and less about the result.  Of course I want my teams to win, but I will only root for them to win — never for their opponents to suffer injury or humiliation.  It took me years and years (and a self-imposed ban on going to games) to figure out how to do that.  I’d like to think I’ve done it fairly well.

My wife and I long to have children.  Given that we are both athletically inclined and sports-mad, our children will no doubt be dragged to many a football game.  I worry about what they’ll hear in the stands.  I worry about what emotions they’ll feel inside. I wonder if, like their father, they will feel that "high" that can so quickly turn ugly.   I don’t know what the future holds for them.  But I know this — no matter what the game, no matter what the score, they will never hear a single word of rage from their parents.  They may hear exasperation and disappointment, but nothing more. (And hey, I’m a Cal fan — I’ve had plenty of experience in recent years practicing being a gracious loser!)

One of the benefits of becoming an "older Dad" (as I surely will be) is that so much of that youthful rage is gone.  It went thanks to my own efforts and God’s grace, frankly, more than mere biological maturation.  I heard plenty of venom from men twice my age this weekend; the idea that men automatically lose all their bile and toxic anger after a certain age is simply absurd.  Nature is not quite so kind — this kind of transformation takes work and prayer.  Time alone doesn’t do it.  Thus Lord willing, my sons and daughters will not have to grow up with a father who gets apoplectic with anger due to lost elections or rivalry games.  They will be, I think, the better for it.

*Drew Olson, the hapless UCLA quarterback on Saturday, is from the same small Bay Area community where my mother and most of my cousins were raised.  Countless family members from four generations went to Piedmont High (Go Highlanders!), and so I really ought to have been rooting for its most successful athletic alumnus.